Keeping Bad Company

By Caro Peacock

Private investigator Liberty Lane faces the most challenging case of her career in this absorbing mystery|London, 1840. Private investigator Liberty faces a conundrum when her younger brother Tom, an East India Company employee, is unexpectedly summoned to London to give evidence at an official enquiry into the murder of a wealthy merchant’s assistant, found with his throat cut en route to Bombay. A connection between the dead man and escalating rows with China over the lucrative opium trade has caused the government concern. Can Liberty solve a murder that took place six months previously almost five thousand miles away?|"This is a delightful mix of historical mystery and cozy with a strong woman protagonist"|"Liberty’s fifth case nicely balances the exotic history of the East India Company, whose private army rules India for British gain, with a mystery that offers a wide range of possible evildoers"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Severn House
• Release date: Feb 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780102351

Caro Peacock

Caro Peacock acquired the reading habit from her childhood growing up in a farmhouse in the late Sixties. Later, she developed an interest in women in Victorian society and from this grew her character of Liberty Lane. She rides, climbs and trampolines as well as enjoying the study of wild flowers.

Book preview

ONE

A footman refilled our champagne glasses so smoothly that the gentleman talking to me didn’t pause in the story he was telling about a certain minister on a recent visit to Paris. The gentleman was keeping his voice low because the minister in question was at the other end of the room, in a group around a minor royal. Half the cabinet were present, in court dress of tailcoats, breeches, silk stockings and buckled shoes. It was very much a ‘decorations will be worn’ occasion, so the men’s chests blazed with orders from all over the globe, gilded, jewelled and enamelled. It struck me as a pity that by the time a man had earned the right to wear silk stockings and jewels, he was usually well past the age when he might look dashing in them. There were exceptions, of course, like that rising politician, Mr Benjamin Disraeli. He was in the group with the minor royal, doing most of the talking as usual. His calves were svelte in silk, his black curls flowing, waistcoat ornamented with some multicoloured honour he must have managed to acquire on his honeymoon European travels. On the edge of the group his wife, Mary Anne, in ill-advised frills of purple silk, watched him adoringly.

Mr Disraeli had greeted me soon after I arrived, in company with a young gentleman from the Foreign Office.

‘What a pleasant surprise to see you, Miss Lane. May I say that you’re looking particularly well this evening?’

The second part of his remarks might have been true. I’d taken trouble for the occasion and was wearing my new amethyst-coloured silk with the low neckline and puffed sleeves, my favourite dragonfly ornament in my hair. The first part was untrue. It wasn’t a surprise to see me because he’d been partly responsible for my attendance at this diplomatic gathering. I sometimes carried out work of a confidential nature for the Foreign Office. Although Mr Disraeli was too ambitious and mercurial to be much trusted by the authorities, he was known to be an acquaintance of mine so was occasionally used to see whether I’d undertake particular assignments.

On this occasion, the task was straightforward and I’d accepted. The gentleman to whom I was listening was, to put things bluntly, a spy in the pay of a foreign embassy. He’d been involved in a nasty piece of work that had caused the suicide of a British diplomat. All I had to do was to slip a particular fact into our conversation that would make clear I was aware of it and see how he reacted. In return for my report, I could expect ten guineas, the knowledge that I’d helped expose a traitor and the possible gratitude of the Foreign Office. My target was near the climax of his grubby story. He leaned towards me confidentially, giving himself the chance to look straight down my bodice. I resisted the temptation to swing my elbow into his ribs. The question I was going to ask him as soon as his story finished would be a much more effective weapon. Only, I never managed to ask it.

I glanced over his shoulder across the room and saw a young gentleman break away from a group of people and come striding towards us, frowning. The sense of urgency about him made me wonder if my employers had, for some reason, changed their minds at the last minute. Nothing distinguished him from all the other young diplomats, except possibly that his face was redder than most. He was in his mid twenties, slightly plump and wore a decoration with crossed swords that looked as if it might be Indian. Something about him seemed familiar. I searched my memory, wondering where I’d met him before and what in the world I might have done to annoy him so much. As he came nearer it was worse than a frown, positively a glare, and directed straight at me. My target must have sensed he was losing my attention because he raised his voice.

‘. . . then, would you believe, the chambermaid said to him . . .’

Then he gasped and pitched forward, nearly knocking me over. That was because the glaring man had cannoned straight into him, catching him with all his weight on the shoulder. My target was gulping indignant noises. Apologies were in order, but the glaring man didn’t make them. He disregarded his victim entirely, looking me full in the face, his eyebrows a black bar.

‘Liberty, what do you think you’re doing here?’

His voice carried. People were staring. I returned his glare with one of my own.

‘I believe you have the advantage of me, sir.’

Meaning that he was a boor twice over, first for barging then for addressing me by my first name. By now the other gentleman had recovered enough to ask him what the devil he thought he was doing. Again he was ignored.

‘I’m taking you home this instant, young lady.’

I thought the red-faced young man had taken leave of his senses. So did some other gentlemen, including my escort for the evening, who were rushing over to protect me. They closed round the young man and tried to hustle him away. He resisted and stood his ground.

‘Kindly don’t interfere. This is a private matter.’

‘Insulting a lady isn’t a private matter,’ one of the gentlemen said.

‘I’m not insulting her. I’m simply removing her from bad company.’

‘Why should you suppose you can dictate my company?’ I said, furious.

And yet, even as I said it, an impossible thought was taking shape in my mind. It came from his voice and the defiant way he was standing. So perhaps, deep down, I wasn’t as surprised by his next words as the gentlemen to whom he spoke them.

‘So if you’ll all excuse me, I am taking my sister home.’

TWO

My brother, Thomas Fraternity Lane, should have been four and a half thousand miles away and on that first evening I heartily wished that he still were. Which was sad, because for the past seven years the dearest wish of my heart had been to see him again. Seven years ago I’d stood with my father, now dead, on the shore at Gravesend and watched the waving white glint of Tom’s handkerchief from the rail of the ship that was carrying him away to India. Tom was fifteen then, I eighteen. Letters from India every six months or so recorded Tom’s career as a rising young administrator with the East India Company. Letters from me, slightly more frequently, recorded all the things about my life that I dared tell him without driving him into a frenzy of worry or disapproval. He wasn’t due for home leave for several years. By that time, I might even have found a way to tell my only brother that his only sister was earning a living as a private inquiry agent. Or perhaps my life would have changed in such a way that I could tell it glancingly, as something that belonged in the past. His sudden and unexplained presence in London had ended that hope. Within seconds of being reunited, we were fighting as if we were back in the nursery.

Given our surroundings, the fight had to be more decorous than when the weapons were shuttlecocks and toy soldiers. Tom, myself and my escort for the evening, Mr Calloway, took ourselves into the lobby where a few footmen were leaning against the wall, waiting for their masters to come out to their coaches.

‘What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming home?’ I said to Tom.

‘I didn’t have a chance. In any case, I didn’t expect to find my sister practically in the arms of a man with one of the worst reputations in London.’

‘I was not practically in his arms. Anyway, how do you know?’

‘Because one of the men I was with was looking at you both and sniggering about old so and so making another conquest. Conquest! My sister!’

‘I can assure you I’m nobody’s conquest. If you want to know, it was quite the reverse.’

‘I don’t want to know. Don’t move from here. I’m going to find a hansom.’

‘And carry me into it with a sack over my head?’

‘If necessary, yes.’

Mr Calloway gave a diplomatic cough. He’d collected my cloak and had it over his arm.

‘Mr Lane, may I suggest that we both escort your sister home.’

He had such a reasonable air about him that my angry brother unbarred his eyebrows and lowered his voice.

‘May I ask who you are, sir?’

‘Malcolm Calloway, of the Foreign Office, at your service. I had the honour to be introduced to Miss Lane by our mutual friends, Sir George and Lady Talbot. She very kindly consented to accompany me to the reception this evening.’

It was the first I knew of George’s knighthood. Trust Mr Calloway to be ahead of the Gazette. His explanation left out a lot of things, but it calmed Tom a little.

‘But that appalling fellow . . .’ Tom said.

‘I entirely agree with you, Mr Lane. Unfortunately, my attention was diverted. If I’d known he was inflicting his presence on Miss Lane, I should certainly have taken the action which you so promptly did.’

I tried not to catch Mr Calloway’s eye. He knew very well why I was there that evening. Part of my anger with my brother was that he’d made me fail in a professional obligation and, probably, cost me a much-needed ten guineas. My cloak wafted itself round my shoulders without visible assistance from Mr Calloway. His glance to the footman by the door produced a carriage as soon as we stepped out on to the pavement, not a hansom but a hireling two-horse landau with room for the three of us. Mr Calloway handed me in and stood back so that Tom could sit beside me.

‘Where shall I tell the driver, Miss Lane?’

More diplomacy. From a past perilous occasion, Mr Calloway was well aware of my address, but it wouldn’t have improved Tom’s mood to know that.

‘Abel Yard, off Adam’s Mews, Mayfair.’

The landau creaked and rattled over the cobbles. It was mercifully too noisy for conversation but I was aware of Tom beside me, tense as a gun dog. At Abel Yard they both got down to help me out. In the light of the carriage lamps, I could see Tom wrinkling his nose at smells of cows and chickens wafting from the far end of the yard. At the bottom of my stairs I thanked them both, wished them goodnight and closed the door before Tom knew what was happening. I needed time. Now I was recovering from the surprise, my heart was singing out that my brother was back. But there’d be explanations and quarrelling to come, I knew that as surely as I knew the sun would rise. For my part, I wanted to know what he’d been doing at a reception in Whitehall when he should have been in Bombay. All next morning I waited in, sure that every carriage going along the mews, every footstep coming into the yard, was my brother’s. By then, the desire for explanations had become a simple wish to see him again. When a knock came at the door in the yard, around noon, I practically threw myself down the stairs and flung back the door, ready to fall on his neck. This impetuosity must have surprised the footman who was standing there in a livery jacket of a strange bright brown colour, but he managed to keep his face a professional blank. I composed mine and accepted the card he was holding out to me. It had a gilded deckle edge and informed me in engraved copperplate that Mrs Benjamin Disraeli would be ‘At Home’, at Grosvenor Gate, that afternoon, from half past two until half past four.

I carried it upstairs, puzzling it out. If Mary Anne Disraeli knew of my existence at all, it would be for reasons that would not have made me particularly welcome at her ‘At Homes’. So the invitation clearly came from her husband, who must want to speak to me. All too likely, it would be to pass on a message from my employers about my failure the previous evening. Not a pleasant prospect, but no help for it. The afternoon was mild and sunny so I put on my green-and-blue printed cotton dress and walked the short distance from Abel Yard to Grosvenor Gate. Mary Anne was receiving her guests in the huge upstairs drawing room. The place was a skirmish of colours, gold silk curtains, crimson carpet, chairs and sofas upholstered in yellow damask, the whole riot reflected in tall mirrors with ornate gilt frames. My hostess, in sage-green satin, welcomed me with a vagueness that confirmed my guess about the invitation. I kept apart from the groups of chatterers and waited, sipping tea and turning over the pages of a book of engravings of Italian ruins that had been left open on a piecrust table and, sure enough, Mr Disraeli appeared at my side within minutes. This afternoon he was relatively soberly dressed in blacks and greys, but his waistcoat was figured gold silk.

‘I trust you enjoyed the reception last night, Miss Lane.’

His voice and a lift of his eyebrow showed he knew very well that I had not, so I kept quiet and waited.

‘It must have been a great pleasure to see your brother again. I’m sure you had a lot to talk about.’

Was he being sarcastic? I glanced at him and realized that for once Mr Disraeli was not thoroughly well informed.

‘There’s always a lot to talk about,’ I said.

‘Quite so. I hope he’s not feeling too nervous about giving evidence to the committee.’

I took a sip of tea, hoping to hide my surprise and probably not succeeding. It was becoming clear that whatever he wanted to talk about, it wasn’t my failure of the evening before.

‘I don’t think Tom’s a nervous man,’ I said.

‘Just as well. It can be an ordeal being questioned by a parliamentary committee, especially in the circumstances.’

I wanted to yelp out: What committee? What circumstances? It sounded terribly as if my brother had been recalled from India in disgrace, but surely, at his comparatively junior level, whatever he’d done shouldn’t be serious enough to concern a committee of MPs. I hid my anxiety, knowing that you always got more out of Mr Disraeli if you knew a lot already.

‘I hadn’t realized Parliament was so directly concerned with East India Company internal affairs,’ I said.

In fact, it was a strange relationship. The vast concern that some people called John Company had grown, in around two hundred years, from a group of merchant adventurers to an organization with its own army that ran the whole subcontinent of India and much else besides. After a series of scandals, parliament had taken away some of its powers. Not enough of them, according to a lot of people.

‘The McDruggies have had some of their opium shipments confiscated by the Chinese,’ Disraeli said. ‘They’re yelling for compensation and war. When trade’s going well, the last thing they want is Government interference. As soon as they take losses, we’re supposed to sail in and save them.’

McDruggies? I tried not to let him see that I didn’t know what he was talking about.

‘I don’t suppose my brother’s to blame for any of that.’

‘No. He’s had the bad luck to be caught up in this affair on the fringes of it. Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t concern the parliamentary committee. Still, when it comes to one of the Company men probably committing murder, I suppose we have to take a decent interest.’

At this point I might have given in and asked him who’d been murdered and what it had to do with Tom, but Mary Anne had spotted us and come rustling across the room, ringlets bouncing, obviously concerned that her husband had been speaking for too long to one woman.

‘Dearest, the Claverleys want to know about Vienna. Do come and talk to them.’

‘Of course, dearest. You’ll excuse me, Miss Lane. We shall talk further.’

He let himself be rustled away, leaving me with half a cup of cold tea and a head spinning with questions.

I knew Tom must come that evening. I’d made everything in our parlour as ready as I could. A fire of best coal burned in the grate with the kettle on the hob and the teapot standing beside it. A bottle from the dozen of good claret a grateful client had sent me was decanted, the finest cold pie that money could buy standing on the table in case he was hungry. The cat was dozing on our new hearth rug. Mrs Martley, the very picture of respectability, knitted in her chair by the fire. My ex-street urchin apprentice, Tabby, was on duty in the yard, ready to whistle up as soon as a gentleman appeared. The whistle came at around eight o’clock, just after we’d lit the lamps. I flew downstairs and this time it really was Tom. Before he could say anything I threw my arms round him and hugged him tightly, trying to make up for those seven years of missing him. For all I knew, he was intending to carry on our quarrel from where he’d left off, but for a while at least I wanted to enjoy the sheer wonder of his being back. He hugged me in return, but with some reserve, then followed me upstairs and stood in our parlour like a stranger, holding his hat and gloves in his hand. When I introduced Mrs Martley as my housekeeper he gave her a polite nod of the head and she bobbed a curtsey. I felt like crying for the time lost but took his hat and gloves from him, made him sit in the other chair by the fire, wildly offered tea, claret, pie.

‘I’ll take a glass of claret,’ he said. ‘Our tea tastes fresher because we’re closer to China. When you’re accustomed to tea in the East, you have no taste for what they do with it in England.’

I made a clumsy business of pouring, hiding my dismay. I’d parted from a brave boy who’d been my follower and companion in adventures. I thought of us racing our ponies over logs in the woods, diving from rocks into the sea, daring each other to climb out of our bedroom windows at night and go watching foxes and badgers under the light of the moon. This young man’s face and figure were rounded, his dark hair sleeked down. He seemed at least five years older than I was, rather than two years younger. When we’d parted, his voice had only just broken and his laugh was still a boy’s. Now he spoke as if tea were a matter of grave policy. I couldn’t tell what to do with this stranger who’d returned in my brother’s place. Then, as I handed him his glass, I looked into his eyes and saw Tom hadn’t gone away after all. They were still the fine dark eyes he’d had at fifteen. And, as so many times on our adventures together, the look in them told me that Tom was very worried or scared and doing all he could to hide it.

I touched my glass to his.

‘To your return.’

‘I’m not sure that it’s worth toasting,’ he said.

Discouraging. I poured a glass for Mrs Martley and handed it to her with a nod and an upward glance that told her to keep her promise: go upstairs and leave me and my brother alone. She went. Tom emptied his glass at two gulps.

‘Liberty, I was very surprised to find you—’

‘Never mind that,’ I said. ‘What’s all this about you and a parliamentary committee and a murder?’

That stopped him in his tracks. He almost dropped the glass.

‘How do you know about that?’

‘It seems to be pretty well common knowledge.’

That was hardly fair to Mr Disraeli, whose knowledge was anything but common but I wasn’t ready to tell Tom about that particular friendship.

‘It was supposed to be a deadly secret,’ Tom said. ‘That was why I couldn’t write and tell you I was coming.’

‘So secret that you attend a Foreign Office reception with half the world there, but can’t tell your sister?’

‘We were ordered to go to the reception. I suppose they wanted to see me and size me up before the formal proceedings.’

‘They being the MPs on this committee?’

A nod.

‘But why do they want to speak to you?’

‘Because I’m a witness. Except I’m not really a witness. There were no witnesses. That’s the confounded thing about it.’

Those dark eyes were full of misery. I refilled our glasses.

‘You’d better tell me about it,’ I said.

THREE

The story Tom told me took us into the early hours of the morning. It ranged the entire distance across India, from Calcutta in the east to Bombay in the west, and then a death just before dawn by some red rocks on a hill. Here it is as he told it.

‘The man who died was named Burton. He was the assistant of a merchant, Alexander McPherson. McPherson runs a company that exports opium from India to China and imports tea from China to Britain. They say he’s well in with the Governor and a lot of the senior men in Calcutta. He used to work for the Company, but then branched out on his own. He’s away trading in Canton half the time. He’s supposed to be as rich as Croesus, built himself a house that’s practically a palace, stuffed with plate and jewels. But like the rest of the opium men, he took a bad knock recently when the Chinese confiscated whole shiploads of the stuff. I’ve never worked in Calcutta so all I knew about him was from gossip, until he arrived in Bombay about eight months ago. It still wouldn’t have been any concern of mine, except for the effect it had on the deputy head of my department, a man named Edmund Griffiths.’

Tom’s voice was warm as he said the name, unlike his tone when talking about McPherson.

‘Although he’s senior to me and a lot older, Griffiths and I hit it off as soon as he was transferred from Calcutta to Bombay. You’d like him, Liberty. He reminds me of father. He’s spent most of his life with the Company, mostly as a local magistrate. He never cared much about money or promotion and as far as I can tell he lives on his pay. What he loves is India. He speaks dozens of the languages and dialects and even writes poetry in some of them. I’ve seen him joking on equal terms with a prince and hunkering down in the dust to talk to some old holy man. Of course, a lot of people in the Company don’t care for that sort of thing. They call him The Mad Griff. Even before he joined us in Bombay, some of the older men were laughing and gossiping about him. They were wondering why he was being transferred all the way there from Calcutta. Then the story got out: he was being sent pretty well in disgrace because he’d made public threats against McPherson. And I have to tell you, Liberty, if I’d been in Griffiths’s place, I hope I’d have been making threats against the man as well.’

Tom’s eyes blazed and he ran a hand through his carefully combed hair, disordering it. He was beginning to look and sound more like the brother I knew.

‘Why?’ I said.

‘Because the man was little better than a bandit. A long way back, in his magistrate days, Griffiths kept coming across natives who’d been deprived of their little bits of land by McPherson. The method was that he’d advance the farmers small loans, get them into debt then take over their land to grow opium. All legal, so there was nothing Griffiths could do about